Building the Ultimate VirtualBox Lab – Install Windows 2012 Base

This article we will be focusing on installing Windows Server 2012 Base for our Building the Ultimate VirtualBox Test Lab series. We will configure a few basic settings, and install all Windows Updates to ensure we are patched up.

Quick reminder: We are setting up linked clones so we can maximize disk usage on our virtual server. If we were to setup normal clones and/or VMs, we would quickly run low on disk space. Since we are using SSDs to store the VDI (virtual hard disk files for our virtualbox VMs), it is very important that we use Linked Clones for this task.

Put a check in the Solid-state drive option under Attributes (This tells the guest OS that it’s drive is an SSD so it can take appropriate actions to deal with an SSD such as disabling defrag, etc..)

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Install and Configure VM

Install the guest OS

Install VBox Guest Additions

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Configure the network adapter

Set the IP statically (your information will probably be different than mine):

IPV4: 192.168.1.8

Subnet: 255.255.255.0

Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (pfSense LAN IP)

DNS: 10.2.0.1 (for now, set it to your home router’s LAN IP or a public DNS so we can resolve hostnames until we setup our server to be a DNS server)

Finish Configuring pfSense

Web into pfSense using the it’s LAN IP from within the VM lan (on this Windows 2012 VM). (For me, I connect to https://192.168.1.1)

Username: admin

Password: pfsense

System -> Setup Wizard

Run through wizard

Take note of the WAN Gateway: Set this to your home’s router IP address. This will ensure that pfSense knows where to send all of the VM’s internet traffic out to the internet.

Set a new/secure password

Final Windows Configurations

Make sure the timezone is set properly and the VM has the correct time

Install .NETt Framework 3.5 Features (if Windows Server)

Server Manager -> Add Roles and Features

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Run through the wizard until you get to Features

Select .NET Framework 3.5 Features and finish the wizard

Install all available Windows updates / patches

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Configure Windows Updates to only check and notify if there are updates so we have control of the process.

Next Step

Now that the virtual machine is installed and updated, the next article in this series will walk you through step-by-step how to prep this VM and .vdi for compacting in order to be used as a Linked Clone.